Motorola Working on WiMAX Interop, Releases Dongle

Sprint-Nextel Corp. will turn up its first mobile WiMAX market, Baltimore, on Oct. 8. And Motorola Inc. is wasting no time in the days leading up to that moment when the champagne is popped open and pictures are snapped of Dan Hesse and Barry West dancing among the XOHM-induced confetti.

The vendor, one of Sprint’s partners in WiMAX, has released a much-anticipated USB WiMAX card, and on Wednesday gave details of a new initiative to pave the way for multi-vendor WiMAX scenarios.

The laptop card, the first commercial offering of its kind, will work just like any 3G data card does today, only will be made for 4G WiMAX and so will presumably deliver cable modem-like speeds likely to take many a road warrior’s breath away. If it works the way it should with the network, that is. Pricing is up to individual operators.

Meanwhile to that whole network point, Moto also announced a WiMAX interoperability testing program (IOT), which will allow service providers to bring WiMAX devices to its labs in Illinois or Taiwan to test for compatibility with their existing WiMAX infrastructures. The idea is to make it easier for a variety of WiMAX-enabled devices to be deployed without fear of compatibility issues, which in turn supports the idea, championed by Sprint, of an open device ecosystem where 4G broadband Internet is embedded in everything from refrigerators to gaming devices, all of which can be bought at consumer electronics stores without the carrier being involved.

But for now, we’ll start with the laptop card.

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